


In Finem

by dreadwulf



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Doing terrible things to Fenris, F/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-03 13:12:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadwulf/pseuds/dreadwulf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris and Hawke have struggled with their feelings for each other for three years. Merrill decides to help them, but she may do more harm than good. (Note: this is less of a Fenris/Hawke story than it is a story about Fenris's past, and about Merrill.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is, in a lot of ways, a braindump of all my headcanon regarding Fenris's past in Tevinter. With that in mind, I have placed warnings about rape/noncon. This is not portrayed directly, but it is referred to at a few points, so I thought it would be better to be careful. The violence trigger warning is for both graphic fight scenes and attempted suicide.
> 
> This is also in many ways a Merrill story, even though the romance plot focuses on Fenris/F!Hawke.

It was sheer luck, it was. That she happened to pass by at that exact moment.

Merrill had lost all of her money at Wicked Grace and it wasn't much fun to watch and not play, not when Anders shot her a dirty look every time she commented on his cards over his shoulder and Hawke suggested she get drinks for the rest of them every few minutes, right when she was starting to tell a particularly interesting story.

So she left the Hanged Man and left the others at their game, with Varric insisting after her that she shouldn't walk in Lowtown alone at night — but she had no money for anyone to steal and besides, she could take care of herself.

Anyway, there she was, walking through the market late at night, and there he was - Fenris, fighting a whole gang of bandits on his own.

She should have jumped in to help. But she didn't. Not right away, at least. She watched.

He would only yell at her for getting in his way, you see. He was never very happy to see her. Really, he was never very happy at all and to be honest he was a bit scary, Fenris. He was always angry. His anger radiated from him in waves - if she could see auras like some of her clan he would be a pulsing purpley-red color that gave you a headache to look at.

But he could fight wonderfully and it was sort of beautiful to watch, to the extent that screaming bloody death could be beautiful. He was like a dancer. So controlled, so graceful. When he whirled around with that gleaming sword these lovely little bursts of blood shot out around him like raindrops and those bandits, so clumsy in comparison, were cut down like grain beneath a scythe.

Soon there was just one robber left and he looked about ready to turn around and run, demonstrating that he wasn't a complete idiot and might actually live through the night after all.

That was when the odd thing happened. Before the one sensible man could run for his life, Fenris dropped his sword.

It wasn't a fumble or a slip. He simply opened his hand and let it fall.

And although she was certainly too far away to see it, Merrill could swear she saw him close his eyes.

Stupid, stupid Merrill. She should have moved in right then.

But she was just too surprised and the bandit must have been pretty surprised too, but he recovered before Merrill did. The cutpurse rushed over to Fenris and in one brutal motion slit his throat from ear to ear.

A red curtain fell below his chin and Fenris dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

(Where did that expression come from - a sack of potatoes? Did someone drop a great many sacks of things to see which of them would fall faster? Or maybe it was the one that hit the ground with the most satisfying effect? Why not a sack of iron fillings instead? Who decides?)

Merrill was wondering for a moment if she was in the Fade, or had drunk a lot more than she had thought she did, or if this was some sort of trick – it just didn't seem like something real. She stared open-mouthed at the dark-haired scruffy human, crouching down to go through the fallen elf's pouches for whatever spoils he could find. The sight of it finally shook Merrill into action. She raised her staff and called loudly upon her magic, and blasted the bandit with a wave of prickly vines that pulled him off and pinned him to the wall.l

"Varric! Someone! Help!" she screamed as loud as she could.

She fell to her knees beside Fenris and his wide, staring eyes and the horrible choking sound he was making as his life bled away.

With no time to think Merrill did something Fenris would find unforgivable if he survived this - she used his blood. In a manner of speaking, that is.

Her magic was fueled by blood, normally only hers. But here was rather a lot of it, spurting like a fountain out from under his chin to the rhythm of his sputtering heartbeat, and if something wasn't done he would perish in only seconds.

So she spoke to the blood already spilled, and used it to speak to the blood still pouring from his wound. _Blood, cease your flow. Thicken. Hold._

It would only work for a minute, but a minute was enough, as it turned out.

She heard Varric coming up behind her - must he always follow her home? - and Anders too. The healer stood over Fenris prone on the ground and called on his magic, and the open gash across the fallen elf's throat knit together smoothly, leaving only a thin, blood-encrusted scar.

"That's all I can do here," Anders told them. "But he's in awful shape. We'll have to get him to my clinic, if he lasts that long."

The boys hefted the elf between them and Merrill ran alongside, wringing her hands fretfully.

Everyone else had abandoned the game of Wicked Grace, when Varric and Anders had followed her out and not returned, and heard the commotion in the market. Some of them raced to the clinic and some of them surrounded her with a rush of comraderie. Aveline said that she had saved Fenris's life and got to work cutting down the cutthroat she had tied to the wall. Isabela slapped her on the back and said well done.

Merrill couldn't seem to get anyone to understand that the trouble wasn't over yet, not at all.

She was pretty sure that Fenris had just tried to kill himself.


	2. Chapter 2

When Merrill came to the Darktown clinic to inquire after Fenris, it was night again, and the clinic was nearly empty.

Hawke was still with him. According to Varric, who had given Merrill a detailed account earlier that day, she had come to the clinic right after it happened and refused to leave, hovering over his bed with open concern. Every time Anders had backed away she would bend over the elf and touch his cheek, speaking to him softly. Fenris couldn't even moan in response, so serious was the damage to his throat. He just looked at her, and only at her, like a drowning man looking at a distant ship.

"I don't understand how this could have happened," she kept saying to Anders.

Anders had wisely decided to refrain from his own assessment of Fenris's character. "I'm afraid for the time being we can't ask him for an explanation. You should go home and rest, Hawke. He'll be fine here."

Hawke insisted on staying, when Varric left her. She looked pale and drawn, he said, so shaken she was by how nearly she had come to losing Fenris forever.

Now, as Merrill arrived, she found Hawke asleep in a chair, her knees that pulled up to her chest, her auburn curls fallen all around her face. Awake you would nearly always find her with a peaceful, encouraging smile, but asleep she looked troubled. There was a little furrow there between her eyebrows, and Merrill wondered what she was dreaming about.

Fenris, awake, lay perfectly still on the clinic bed. His face was battered and bruised, and his white hair stained red at the ends from all he had bled. He would be weak awhile, Anders said. He stopped the bleeding but he could not return all the blood he had lost, nor could he repair all of the damage to his throat.

He was watching Hawke sleep.

Merrill knew this feeling. It _was_ nice to be able to look at Hawke without her staring back - she had this piercing sort of gaze, something she did with her eyes that made you have to blink and look away. Asleep, you could just see the softness of her face, watch how her full lips parted ever so slightly in a small, inaudible sigh as she slept.

He had that look again. The look that was both pleasure and pain at the same time, with that crinkle around his eyes and the wrinkle to his brow. This was more expression than you ever saw on his face, this look that only hinted at the naked longing beneath it. _Puppy eyes,_ Merrill thought, but it didn't make her smile this time.

Why couldn't they just be together? Merrill could never understand it. Obviously they adored each other. Fenris was mean and grumpy most of the time but around her he was different. She eased something in him, smoothed him out, made him less... prickly. And Hawke, she just lit up when she saw him like a magic spell that made her all aglow from the inside. Why then would they not simply go to bed together and love each other? Why did people have to make things so… complicated?

Some of her friends said it was for the best, that Fenris was no good for her. And it was true that Fenris could be incredibly difficult to deal with. But Hawke was patient and loving and they were good to each other, and not being together was making them sad.

Merrill hated to see her friends so sad.

She was so distracted by this thought that she stepped too close, and the other elf's green eyes darted away from their contemplation of Hawke and narrowed at her slightly.

"Oh dear," she mumbled hastily. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean… to disturb you, you can — I just wanted to see how you were."

He shrugged extravagantly, and Merrill remembered that he couldn't speak right now. His neck was mended but his vocal cords had been cut, and they were taking longer to heal.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I forgot - anyway, you don't need to answer me. I just wanted to bring… these are Vir Atish'an Enansal... um, Sylaise's Blossoms, for health and healing."

He closed his eyes dismissively, and she knew he could not possibly care less about her flowers. But she fussed with them anyway, laid them out on a table next to his bed. These things worked whether you believed in the old ways or not, and Fenris was still an elf even if he was like no other elf she had ever met.

As she arranged the flowers, she examined the scar across his neck. It was still ugly red, and would probably stay. The rest of the healing would take time, but he would be back on his feet soon, if not in fine speaking form for awhile yet.

And then what would he do? Would he try the same trick again?

"I am sorry, you know," Merrill said in a low voice, making certain not to wake Hawke. "I think I ruined your plan."

Fenris's eyes flew open.

"It is yours to decide, lethallin. If I'd been thinking… I only wanted to help."

He sat bolt upright and grabbed her by her arms. Even weak, his grip was very strong and he shook her violently enough to make her teeth rattle. His eyes were wide and panicked and he made a croaking sound deep in his throat, trying to tell her… something.

"Fenris! Stop!" Startled awake, Hawke rushed around the bed to try to separate them.

"It's all right," Merrill kept saying, as Hawke worked to detach very strong hands from her. She was caught by the look in his eyes, the pain there and the fear.

"Don't worry," she told him. "I won't tell."

He let go, and fell back onto the bed.

Hawke looked between the two of them. "Won't tell what? What happened here? Merrill, are you okay? Fenris?"

He closed his eyes and he looked so tired.

Merrill stuttered over a possible reply. She was so bad at lying, especially when it was important. Usually the best thing to do was _not lie_ , whenever possible.

So she turned and ran out of the clinic.

* * *

In the alienage, Merrill paced across her tiny home again and again, wondering fretfully what she ought to do now, or if she even _should_ do anything now.

She wished there was someone she could ask for advice. Usually she would ask Hawke. But Fenris did not want _her_ to know, her above anyone else — that much she understood, from what had happened in the clinic.

She would sometimes ask Varric for advice. But not if it was a secret. You could not tell secrets to Varric, because then they would no longer be secret. Absolutely everyone would know within a day or two. Isabela was... not any better with such things.

The Keeper… she could not ask the Keeper anything anymore.

Merrill slumped in a chair and thought, hard.

He had confirmed it, she was sure. His reaction proved that she was right and he had meant to die in that alley. But why? And why now?

It made no sense. After all he had fought for his freedom, to just give up? Only recently he had killed his former master, and although Merrill had not been there she had gotten the whole story. He had killed Denarius by his own hands. His great goal accomplished, he could now live as a truly free man. He should have been happy. He _must_ have been. He hadn't looked happy, but Merrill couldn't say for sure what a happy Fenris would look like, having never seen it herself.

If not for the evidence of her own eyes she would not have believed it to be true. But she had seen, and this memory was haunting her. The way his eyes had closed against his killer, how he had welcomed him. The peaceful glaze in his expression as he lay dying. He had wanted it. He wanted everything to be over.

And had she not stumbled upon him at the very moment she did, none of them would ever have known what really happened. They would simply have found him on one last battlefield, bled dry.

What should she do?

Fenris had been no great friend to her; he had been cruel, at times, and at other times simply dismissive. But she could not just forget what she had seen. And there was Hawke, who Merrill loved dearly. Her heart would be broken if he had died, she was sure of it. For Hawke's sake she had to do something.

And… well, Merrill couldn't stand to see any living being in pain.

He reminded her of a bear caught in a trap. She had seen one while traveling with the Dalish, a fierce mother bear defeated by a small metal claw. She could not get herself free, had plainly fought for many hours to get loose - but when Merrill had approached her wanting to help she growled at her fiercely. Whatever her intent, if she had gone anywhere near the bear she would have been torn to pieces just the same. It was in the animal's nature - she could no more accept help from an elf than she could turn into a bird and fly away.

For the bear, she could put the creature to sleep with her magic so that she could get close enough to pry the horrid teeth open and treat the wound before it was too infected to repair.

Unfortunately there was no aid that Fenris would accept from her, under any circumstances, and especially not magic.

The more she thought on it, though, the more Merrill became convinced that magic was the only way to help him. Better he hate her completely for it and be alive than hate her marginally less and be dead.

That was how she decided to perform the spell.


	3. Chapter 3

It was so very dark.

This wasn't the dark of an evening in Lowtown or even the dark of a cave. Not the natural darkness of night but the darkness of the abyss, of imprisonment.

Merrill had to fight off panic. Not knowing where she was or what lurked in the shadows was the worst feeling. She had never done well in the dark. Even the caves that Hawke frequently dragged her too gave her a spooky enclosed feeling. She was raised in the wilds, where the sky was her rooftop and she had always had starlight or moonlight to light her way.

It would have been easy to call up her magic to light her surroundings and show the way out. Her fingers itched to summon a light, any light. Just to see where she was.

But it wasn't her dream and she didn't want to alert the dreamer just yet.

With time, her eyes began to adjust and dark shapes began to appear. She shuffled her bare feet awkwardly and inched forwards. The ground beneath her was solid and crafted, not natural. The floor sloped sharply downwards in front of her, and at its bottom a small platform prevented it from meeting its opposite in a sharp point. Merrill bent down and felt the floor - wood, good oak. And damp. This was the hold of a ship. The dark shapes around her were barrels, probably. She could only see a few feet in front of her.

A scrambling sound drew her attention. She inched toward the sound gradually, and this was where she found the dreamer.

He was bolted to the wall by a metal band at the neck. As the ship lurched and tilted he had to fight continuously against the wet sloped floor to stand, to prevent slipping in the dampness and choking against the metal collar. But there was nothing for him to hold onto and frequently he did slide off his feet and strangle, until he could push himself up an inch or two and breathe again. There would be no rest for him during this journey, with the ship constantly leaning to and fro and knocking him off his feet. He could steal perhaps a minute of sleep before being choked awake again. She could see him panting with the effort of it.

His lyrium brands glowed faintly. They seemed to be dampened by the collar he wore, which prevented him from activating them fully.

Merrill could only be baffled by such pointless cruelty, and not appreciate the cleverness of it. Not the way the dreamer could, in a bitter sort of way. This way there was no need to guard him. He could be unbelievably dangerous if he ever had a chance to think very hard, but with measures like this his survival consumed him utterly and left no energy to contemplate or plan.

The dream or memory or whatever it was hovered over this scene, which must have gone on for hours or even days. Merrill crouched in the dark and watched everything.

This was the commission she had set herself: to observe. To enter the Fade with Fenris and see what plagued him, with only a little gentle direction to help her find what needed to be revealed. It was an invasion of the most private sort, and he would be murderously angry with her for violating his mind, she knew.

And he would be right to be angry.

But Merrill had always been willing to do the wrong things, if the reasons were good enough. She had contacted her demon willingly, spilt her own blood to power her magic, and worked endlessly with her mirror — all of these very bad things, many people had told her. By comparison, this would be a small thing, she thought.

Sometimes nobody else would be willing or able to do what must be done, and then no one would act, and things would be lost. If someone had to do it, Merrill was willing to bear the consequences. There would always have to be someone who dealt with the dark places, to bring the important things to light. Merrill could see no other way to help Fenris but to force help on him, since he would not accept it openly. She could only hope there was no way to do him more damage with her presence here.

Her fretting ceased at the sound of footsteps, a group of them, wearing shoes that sounded against the damp wood. She straightened and stood, unable to make out anything more than shapes apart from the dreamer's faintly glowing form.

One of them carried an oil lamp, and for the first time Merrill could see her surroundings. The hold spanned the entire length of the ship, most likely. At the other end, there were cages. Large cages, with people in them.

"Your Master calls you," one of the shapes spoke.

The slave leaned his head back and looked at them. There was no defiance in his face, and without it Merrill could barely recognize him. There wasn't much of the Fenris she knew in this face at all. He looked… empty.

The humans surrounded him, slipping themselves on the slanted floor, and unhooked him from the wall. The collar remained, with a heavy chain attached. By this chain they lead him out of the room. When he slipped against the floor, stiff from being chained for so long, they dragged him by the neck until he scrambled up on all fours like a dog.

It was much more terrible, knowing the man he would be later, to see him like this now. This would have been easier if it were a stranger. Shivering, Merrill forced herself to follow. Whenever she found herself averting her eyes, she made herself look.

There was no turning back now, and this was only going to get worse.

As the men dragged the dreamer away through the depths of the ship, they passed other figures. Other slaves, not chained but crouched together in the hold, some in cages and some outside them, eyes glittering in the dark.

Merrill knew without seeing it that they were elves.

 _Why was I never told of this?_ Merrill wondered for the first time. _Until I met Fenris I thought of our captivity as something in the past, before the Empire fell back. All of our talk about the great and glorious past of the elves, and what the humans took from us centuries ago. But this… this happened within my lifetime. This is still happening right now. And we never speak of it._

Merrill looked upon the faces of the galley slaves in flashes of torchlight, the ones who fire the canons and row the boats and serve the officers hand and foot, and to a one they were elves. All of them.

_Yet we don't consider these poor souls our cousins, or even elves truly. The only real elves are the Dalish who keep the old ways, that is what I was taught. But what if the old ways were taken from you by force?_

All of the disdain Fenris had for the Dalish, and their adherence to ancient tradition, suddenly made sense.

_The Dalish despise the city elves who live in squalor, and ignore our cousins who still slave for the imperium, and yet we call ourselves The True People. It must have seemed like a cruel joke to him. Our purity comes at the price of ignoring our own kind, our old ways ignore any history we'd rather forget. We speak of old glories and old crimes, when new ones are happening even now._

But Merrill had to believe, insisted on believing, that the Dalish were preserving the old ways for everyone, for all elves, even these lost ones. One day they would regain their place and they would come back for them, and avenge this crime.

Her thoughts were disrupted when the small procession climbed up a ladder and into the light, and she was pulled up with them as though by an invisible chain linking her to the dreamer. For a moment Merrill was blinded. She stumbled against the tumbling walls of the ship, and the dissonant sounds that surrounded her pounded through her head. The rush of the sea and the roaring of the wind combated with the clanks and clangs of men working, shouting amongst themselves in an unintelligible din made up of all the languages in the world. _Isabela makes it sound so romantic_ , she thought dazedly. _But I don't like this at all._

They were climbing out onto the deck and there were men gathering there, staring at the tattooed slave. A palpable anxiety rippled through this crowd of hard men. They didn't like to be made to look upon a slave. And certainly not one that was bred to fight and kill.

Merrill could see the men escorting him now, how they sneered at him as they dragged him out into the sunlight. These men were unimpressed. This dirty, skinny elf could barely hold up his own head, much less fight like a warrior. The magister exaggerated his claim, obviously. Perhaps they would throw the wretched thing overboard, if it did not prove useful.

The largest of them knelt beside the white-haired elf, who was blinking against the daylight, and grasped his collar roughly, jerking his head to one side. He barked something loud and viscous in his ear, probably a warning to do as he was told.

Then, with a loud snap, the collar fell from his neck and Fenris was freed.

He straightened and looked around him, rubbing at his neck. Then he pulled himself up to his feet, and the crowd murmured. He was tall for an elf, and his brands began to glow with an eerie humming sound. There was a certain dignity in his stance that was not there before, and an intimidating aura of power that slowly grew to envelop him.

The slave reached out his right hand expectantly to the handlers that surrounded him.

A sword was placed into it, and he examined it with an interest he had not shown in anything else. It was a good sword. Merrill knew it, because he knew it, and it was his dream. Newly forged, ornate but not at the cost of efficacy. It was sharp and heavy and would strike true.

A grim smile crossed his face as he lifted it with both hands, testing its weight.

Then his Master's voice sounded like a thunderbolt, and his head snapped to attention instantly.

"Sailors, officers, noble passengers. This is Fenris, my little wolf."

The Magister stood at the wheel above them all, wearing dark robes in the hot sunlight that made him appear a shadow. He was tall and commanding, and the Captain seemed to shrink beside him.

The slave's eyes were fixed to him and him alone.

Danarius seemed amused by the crowd's response to their entrance. "You are right to fear him. Fenris could kill any one of you without breaking a sweat. But he is entirely tame, and will do anything I ask."

"Little wolf."

Fenris nodded to him at this address, ready for his command.

"There stands a man who means to mutiny against this ship and its captain. Kill him."

The human was only recently freed from the stocks, his skin sunburnt from the exposure. They gave him a sword and he seemed to know how to use it. They had told him that if he won in single combat, they would let him go. It seemed an easy enough task, to kill a slave. He looked his opponent over and grinned, exposing a row of missing teeth. This one had done quite a bit of fighting in his day. He had killed many. One more would not be difficult.

The crowd tittered uneasily. Of course there was no way they could let the mutineer go free, no matter what he had been promised. If he killed the slave, would they have to throw him overboard anyway?

Only Merrill knew that he was about to die a horrible death.

Danarius knew it too, and remained standing when everyone else settled back and sat on the floor. He knew it would not be a lengthy duel and stood proudly over his greatest possession as the fight began.

It was a farce, from beginning to end. The human got off only a single strike, which Fenris easily parried, and whirled around to slap his blade across the man's back, striping it with blood.

From there he struck blow after blow, easily, effortlessly, until he knocked the sword from the other man's hands and the real carnage began.

Merrill had seen Fenris do a great many gruesome deeds. In Kirkwall he had pulled the still-beating heart of his enemies from their chests as they gaped in horror. He tore out the throat of his master, the man watching him now, with his bare hands.

She could never have imagined that he was being merciful.

Now, for their entertainment, he began to take the man apart piece by piece. No single subtraction was enough to kill the poor soul, who was progressively hobbled by the elf's attacks until he could do no more than lie on the ground and scream.

As he grows more and more bloody and the cheers grow ever louder, the slave truly comes alive. There is a fierce pleasure in the fighting, something very like delight. It is the only pleasure he has in this life.

His hands, feet, genitals, nose were sliced off one at a time, with increasingly acrobatic flourishes. From inside the man, he produced organs: a greenish bloody sack the size of his fist, a trail of intestine, a rib. The grim spectacle is greeted with cheering from the audience, who have gotten over their disquiet and now cheer the slave on, hungry for more and more blood.

Merrill finally cannot watch as what's left of the man begs for death, and is methodically massacred by a grinning white-haired devil.

In the end they had to pull him off, leaving no more than a slab of meat staining the decks, and Merrill had to fight the urge to vomit.

They wrestled the slave to the ground and he fought them mindlessly, snarling like an animal, but soon the collar was back around his neck and he submitted to their hold.

They applaud him then - Magister Danarius, who had produced this marvelous spectacle. He accepted their praise with false modesty, and motioned for his slave to be brought inside.

Already as the crowd dispersed the other elven slaves threw the vaguely human remains overboard and began to scrub the decks, to remove the stain, as the Magister called for his dinner to be served inside.

Merrill wondered for the first time if this had been a mistake.


	4. Chapter 4

Merrill found herself suddenly in a dining quarters, one that tilted and rocked subtly. Which meant she was still on the ship. Elgar'nan, couldn't Fenris dream of somewhere that wasn't making her seasick?

She slid along the wall, hoping to remain unobtrusive. If the dreamer became aware of her presence, the dream would abruptly end. And he would realize what she had done, which would be awfully unpleasant. No, she must make certain to hide herself from him as best she could.

These walls were paneled with fine dark wood, giving the room a nice scent of forest that momentarily relaxed her. The smell of food drew her attention over to a huge table that looked like mahogany, heavy, bolted to the floor. Pictures, tapestries, and a mirror (not an Eluvian) were also bolted to the walls, giving the room the appearance of a sitting room in a house, not a tiny quarters on a ship. Very fancy, very fine. These must be the Captain's quarters. But the Captain was not keeping them, not while Magister Danarius was on board.

The Magister sat at the long table with his hands folded in front of him, elegant, aristocratic fingers laced together, awaiting his meal. He was a tall human in dark robes, with a finely trimmed short beard, and he had the grey eyes of a thunderstorm.

He reminded her of someone.

Merrill racked her brain but she couldn't place it. Something about this man was intensely familiar, as though she had met him before. But that was impossible, of course. She had never been to Tevinter, and this man had never been among the Dalish, that she knew for certain. She had not been with Hawke and the others when they confronted him at the Hanged Man weeks ago. She has never seen him before, she couldn't have.

Watching him made her uneasy. His outward demeanor was calm, but something churned inside him, an impatience and contempt that radiated like heat from the sour human even as his expression remained perfectly detached, polite. The air around him crackled with unspent power, invisible lightning waiting for his command. The Fade gathered darkly around him in a way she had never seen before, even among the Keepers of the Dalish. Clearly this was a mage of incredible skill.

The dreamer was kneeling behind him in a dark corner. His head remained bowed and his body stiff, holding himself perfectly still as if the slightest movement could bring a reprimand. Only because Merrill watched him so closely did she notice his eyes flickering up to the table, only for a second, almost invisible.

There was more food on the table than one man could eat in a week, much less in one meal. There was poultry and venison and great bowls of gleaming fruit: grapes, apples, dates. Steaming fresh loafs of bread lined up in a half-dozen different varieties, so that one could choose according to their mood. Sweet rice pudding waited for desert.

In a huge goblet a blood-red wine was poured by a shaking female elf, a galley slave who did not know Master Danarius but knew his reputation. She looked quite young. Merrill was reminded of one of her girlhood companions who had the same chestnut hair, though this girl was very thin and pale, nowhere near as healthy and sun-kissed as the Dalish. This girl was terrified of the Magister. She knew that a single mistake could cost her life, and that if she drew attention to herself in any way he may kill her anyway. He was unpredictable, unfathomable.

Merrill knew this in the way you know everything in dreams. The same way she knew that it had been days since the tattooed elf has had anything to eat, and that he could think of nearly nothing else.

The smell of food and wine was vivid in the dream. It pierced even Merrill with a desperate hunger.

The poor frightened elf girl finished pouring the wine and retreated from the room as quickly as she could, curtsying hastily. As the Magister ate, Fenris stayed kneeling on the floor, eyes staring emptily at the floorboards.

It was so confusing; Merrill couldn't understand it. If not for the white hair and the markings, she would not have recognized him at all. He was like an entirely different person. The Fenris she knew was so dignified, and he would sooner die than kneel on the floor in chains. He never listened to anybody, really, he did whatever he wanted and kind of snarled at you if you suggested otherwise. This Fenris was perfectly obedient, even willing.

It was all wrong, upside-down and backwards.

She had always imagined him a resentful, defiant slave, furious and hating all of them and plotting his escape. There was no fight in this Fenris at all, except for when he killed that man. And that was at his master's command, not on his own.

Could this be right? It was a dream, after all, even if a memory. It could be that he remembered wrongly. This couldn't possibly be Fenris, this pitiful creature abashed and powerless before her. It had to be some sort of mistake.

"You've done well, my pet," the magister spoke out of nowhere, making Merrill jump. "It could have been faster, but it was certainly a flashy performance. Don't you think?"

His voice raised into an address at the end, an amused query directed to the ship's captain who had just entered the room. A red-bearded human, who looked strangely nauseous in the ship's dining quarters - of course he wasn't seasick. He was something else.

"Very impressive, my lord."

"Ah, but something is on your mind, Captain." Magister Danarius paused in his carving of the steaming venison on his plate. "Enlighten me, dear man - what is your concern?"

The Captain cleared his throat. "Ah, it is your bodyguard here, your... little wolf, you said? We'd like not to house him in the Galley, if we may. He frightens the others."

Danarius chuckled at this. "Little rabbit-hearted elves. They know a predator when they see one."

"Indeed so."

"We will not be traveling with you long, and I'm afraid I must insist. It will do them all good, you see? My pet should know firsthand how he would live with a less kindly Master."

"And the others, ser?"

"They should know fear, from time to time."

Danarius resumed eating, and the Captain turns as if to leave. But he hesitated, with his eyes on the white-haired elf.

"What?" The magister asked with some annoyance.

"Perhaps we should prepare something for... your pet? We have not fed him. You see. And he must be—"

"Are you suggesting I do not care properly for my little wolf?" Denarius's voice curled around the man dangerously, like smoke.

"No— no." He stammered in reply.

"I am entirely too kind, in fact. I spoil him rotten. Isn't that right, Fenris?"

The kneeling figure looked up at last, and when he spoke it was in a voice that Merrill had never heard before. Flat, dull, and submissive, entirely unlike the Fenris she knew.

"Yes, Master. You are too kind."

"You see?" Danarius reached across the table to a bowl of apples, and plucked one. "Let's have that serving girl back, I require more wine."

"Yes, ser. Right away." The captain nodded and retreated, shuddering.

"Are you hungry, my pet?" The apple rolled around his nimble fingers as the collared slave tried not to look at it. He didn't answer one way or the other, but it was clear that he was starving.

"Ah, here we are." Danarius greeted the serving girl and flicked the apple over his shoulder like so much garbage. It fell several feet away from Fenris and his eyes alighted on it hungrily.

As the serving girl refilled the magister's wine and his attention drew to her, the slave stealthily tried to retrieve the apple. But he was chained to the wall, and the apple was just outside of his reach. It was a bit pitiful, the way he struggled with the chain to get just one more inch over, and Merrill averted her eyes to watch the Magister instead.

He was running his hands along the elf girl's arm, sliding under her sleeve to skim the soft skin beneath. The girl watched his grey hand touching her, frozen in terror.

"Rather a pretty thing, this one. She would be a nice addition to this evening's recreation. Wouldn't she?"

Meanwhile the chained man has reached the apple with his bare foot and flicked it close enough to grab. With his chains ringing lightly he scurries back to the corner and his kneeling position, and hungrily devours the apple within seconds. Core and stem and seeds, all.

"Come, my pet. I need you." The magister motions him to the table, and Merrill has a flicker of hope that more food will be shared, and not thrown to the floor like scraps to a dog. But the slave has no such hope; he seems to know what's coming.

"This girl will be joining us tonight. Wouldn't you like that, pet?"

"Yes, Master," he said dully.

"She is much too frightened to be any good, sadly. We will have to persuade her." He grabbed at his slave's wrist and pinned it onto the table, and from his robe he proffered a long, shining knife.

Oh no. Oh, no no no.

Merrill watched in horror as the magister bared the knife. Surely he wouldn't. But of course she should have known. Danarius cut Fenris down his arm, a long clean cut, producing a trail of dark red blood. "I suppose I could use hers," he said to himself, "but this blood is the most delicious. It makes my magic sing."

Merrill recoiled. Though a blood mage herself, she would never use someone else's blood for a spell and certainly not against their will. It would be a violation of the highest order. She had seen the results of blood magic sacrifices when they had hunted Hadriana, but she had never actually witnessed such a thing herself. _No wonder he hates blood magic,_ she thought. _So much of his own blood must have been used to fuel this awful man's spells._

He constructed the spell elegantly, with a terrible beauty that Merrill could appreciate, even as it made her sick to her stomach. It was an intimate thing, blood magic. It calls upon the very life essence, taps into your innermost self. He drew the blood from his slave and the spell he cast was flavored with his very being – even to Merrill, an observer, the spell felt sickly Fenris-like.

As it enveloped the elf girl all of her fear and inhibition fell away, and she looked upon both of them with lustful eyes.

Enough of his blood was used that the slave's eyes glazed over, and he sat back against his heels, his arm pulling out of the magister's grasp and bleeding onto the floor. Danarius paid him no mind now; he was done with him. His attention now was on the elf girl, a new distraction who was now confidently feeding him grapes and letting him lick the syrup from her fingers.

Merrill moved around the table to look at Fenris, kneeling with perfect stillness with a faraway look in his eyes. A slowly spreading puddle of blood was gathering under him that he did not seem to notice.

She was forming a half-baked idea to interrupt the dream somehow and rescue the dreamer from all of this degradation. But she worried that it might be worse for him, to see her here witnessing this particular scene. What could she do?

Merrill glared up at the Magister. He was the reason. The reason people hated and feared blood magic, the reason her own clan had cast her out. People like this who abused their magic and used it to control and enslave the minds of others. To drain a man's very soul away to satisfy your whims.

_You're dead. You're dead and gone and I'm GLAD you're dead and you shouldn't be haunting him like this anymore. What are you still doing here?_

Danarius had the elf girl in his lap now, straddling him, and starting to remove her own clothing. He laughed, a low and threatening sound, and turned suddenly away.

The elf girl was dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

"Patience, little rabbit," he said without looking at her. "I haven't finished my dessert."

She looked wounded. The sudden loss of his attention provoked a desperate need for his approval that was commanded by the very blood in her veins. She crawled beside him and began to strip, as provocatively as she could imagine, and when he ignored her still she began to cry.

There was a very small smirk on his lips as he finished the rice pudding and pushed back from the table. Danarius straightened his robes, neatly, and dabbed at his mouth in a prim sort of way with a linen napkin.

And Merrill's stomach dropped.

She knew, suddenly, where she had seen him before. Many times before, in fact. Because _she had seen Fenris do the very same gesture a thousand times before._ In precisely the same way.

In fact, nearly all of his mannerisms were the same. Exactly the same. The way he sat, the way he ate, the way he fussed with his clothing. Even the way he spoke, sometimes, and the sneer on his face.

The Fenris she knew was a nearly exact copy of Danarius.


	5. Chapter 5

Merrill watched in horrified fascination as the Magister finished his lavish meal and began his correspondence.

The resemblance was uncanny, and it made no sense. Why would Fenris act so like the man he hated so much, the man he would later kill? Fenris despised mages, and magisters in particular. Merrill bit her nails anxiously, wondering if her magic had done this somehow. It all seemed wrong. None of this was at all what she expected.

As the elf girl smoothed away the uneaten food from the table, Magister Danarius uncorked the bottle of ink he had set aside and spread papers across the table. His slave still knelt at his side, motionless beneath him. From time to time, the magister would reach down and stroke his white hair affectionately, as you would a child or a pet. Fenris appeared to take this the way he did everything else: dispassionate, distant.

Danarius read his letters aloud, periodically, as he composed their response. He posed impenetrable questions of Imperial politics to the elf girl, chuckling at her bafflement, and repeated what he thought to be a particularly clever turn of phrase aloud for her befuddled admiration.

All along Fenris stared into space, but now with something new in his face. He was listening. Merrill could tell. He was listening very carefully to the news from Minrathous and the machinations of war with the Qunari, and what's more he followed it fully, having done it many times before.

This was the same Fenris after all. It was all true. The observant intelligence that she knew in him in Kirkwall was here too, though captive and deeply hidden. Behind this blank expression was a mind that hungered for stimulation and for knowledge. This was how he knew so much about Tevinter despite his status as a slave. However disinterested he appeared to his surroundings, Fenris was absorbing _everything_ , every detail. Not for the day when he would somehow need them, because such a day was unimaginable, but simply because he was _so very hungry._

She wondered if he knew. Danarius. Maybe that was part of the pleasure of it.

It explained, too, how he had come to know so intimately the body language and gestures of his master. He had been with him for a decade, after all. Nearly all of his time would have been at his side, attentive to his every action, watching him for signs of danger or reward.

Abruptly, the Magister closed his ink bottle and folded his papers away, and Merrill's contemplation came to an end. Something was going to happen now. Something really bad.

The elf maiden was fully his now, the blood spell having made her forget the Captain and the ship and everything that came before Master Danarius. She knew everything he wanted and needed and would happily do all of it for him, anything, even what shyness or decency or self-preservation might have prevented.

He took notice of her now, and nodded in satisfaction.

"Come, little rabbit. Little wolf."

Danarius took them both away - the girl walking beside him willingly, Fenris following behind, lead by the chain attached to the collar around his neck. It was unclear if this leash was truly necessary to keep him under physical control, or if it was just humiliation to keep him in his place. _Either way it's horrible_ , Merrill thought, wincing.

They were going into the bedroom.

Merrill did not want to go into that room. She had promised herself that she would watch everything and not look away, but she really, really didn't want to watch this. Even so, she followed, because Fenris was going in there and he didn't have the option of looking away.

Or perhaps he did — in the dream, at least. Because it stuttered in a strange way, jumping through several quick flashes of imagery like paintings taken from memory. There was Danarius disrobed, and the elf girl, and there was blood. There was enough blood that Merrill knew it was highly unlikely that her poor cousin left that room alive.

But the dreamer averted his eyes from this memory and everything skipped ahead.

Abruptly the scene changed and Fenris was being dragged back into the hold. Literally dragged, not walking but prone and possibly unconscious, by two men who had him by the arms. When they get to the ladder down to the belly of the ship they look at each other and just pushed him down the stairs and he landed in a heap, groaning. As they descended themselves into the hold they debated together over whether it remained necessary to tie him up. They finally agreed to bolt him back to the wall as they found him earlier.

They left him there, hanging by his neck from the wall and scrambling again for a foothold. Only now he looked relieved, strangely relieved. Now he was alone again and his discomfort had a predictable rhythm and duration and the fear was diminished, for now, so that he could rest.

Merrill crouched on the wood floor again, thinking, watching him. She wondered how long this journey must have taken, if it was better in Minrathous, if it was worse.

She wondered what she was doing here, and how much longer the dream would last, and she wanted to cry.

And suddenly they were in Kirkwall.

It was that fast - they were in the ship's hold, in a seemingly eternal parade of miseries, and then Fenris was standing in his armor in Hightown, a free man, outside Hawke's manor.

Merrill opened her eyes and laughed with relief, to be back on familiar ground again, and away from that horrible place and that awful man. She opened her arms and whirled around in the night air, joyous.

The stars were out, and everything was beautiful.

Merrill's celebration abruptly ended when she noticed Fenris.

The elf did not look relieved at all. He stared at the building as though it were the lair of a dragon.

He was gathering all his courage. It was not the first time he has stood outside her door, unable to go any further. Clenching and unclenching his hands, working out the right words to say.

This looked more like the Fenris that Merrill knew. And like Danarius, she now recognized. But she could make sense of it now. Here in the street, with ordinary people passing by, it made more sense.

When Fenris ran away he had never done anything. He had always been treated like an animal, not a person. He'd never eaten at a fancy table or held a long conversation, never purchased something for himself or chosen his own clothes or decided where to go and what to do. He had no parents or teachers, no peers who could have taught him these things. From what he could remember, he had only ever had his Master.

And he wouldn't, couldn't admit to anything he didn't know how to do. He was like this even now. He must have faked it. Everything. He pretended he had done it all a thousand times and the one person he had ever observed closely enough to imitate was Danarius. The man who had shaped him for over a decade, made him into his finest weapon and proudest possession.

This was the only way he knew how to pretend to be a real person. He did it badly at first, and then with confidence and then without thinking about it at all. It became a comfortable mask, one that admitted him to the company of free men. And if he had found something original to himself in this entire charade he regarded it a moment of weakness, something to hide away in shame.

Merrill imagined it had made him feel stronger, to imitate the one who had terrorized him so. It must have intimidated everyone he met. It certainly intimidated her. He needed to inspire fear in his pursuers and in the people he encountered who could easily turn him in. He would have to be strong. He would hide who he had been. Admit openly to having been a slave, but never, ever show it. Such weakness could only endanger him. Return him to the nightmare.

He had bluffed his way through everything else but this was different. Hawke was different. All of his casual disregard, his contempt, he could not use with her. She deserved more than that.

Danarius would have despised Hawke. She was kind and sweet and good, all things his Master would have considered weakness. But Hawke was not weak. There was a solid strength to her, a real courage to her generous spirit. Fenris admired her. She defended the weak and comforted the afflicted, and she seemed afraid of nothing. She had never hesitated to help Fenris when he had needed it - even though he had only rewarded her with harsh words and spite. She seemed to understand it, even when he really didn't. In the face of all his bluster she did not flinch. She seemed to see through it all, right to the core of him, where even he wasn't sure what there was to find.

She made him do things that made no sense. Feel things that made no sense.

He had no reference for someone like her. She had confounded his expectations at every turn. And what she wanted from him now he couldn't begin to imagine. The things that people who _truly care for each other_ might do together… this was a mystery to him. Hawke should have someone be good to her. Fenris didn't know how to be good to her. All he'd ever known was cruelty and the only thing he could really call his own was his rage.

She filled him with impulses he couldn't understand, that weren't part of his facade. She made him wonder if there were vestiges of the man he once was, deep down inside him, that her kindness was slowly awakening. Perhaps he could be that person again, and let go of the things the Imperium had taught him to be. Stop imitating a person, and actually be one. 

Or maybe he was fooling himself, and she didn't see any such thing. Maybe Hawke was simply kind to everyone regardless of whether they truly deserved it. And perhaps if he tried to approach her as a man to a woman she would recoil in horror, and any hope he had of a way out of all this misery would be crushed.

Merrill knew all of this in a moment and wished she didn't. She didn't want to know this about Fenris. She wanted to go back to the arrogant, insufferable Fenris who had triumphed over his past and emerged victorious, a free elf unbreakable.

Here, in the moonlight, he looked… fragile. So young, and so frightened, and so lost.

_It isn't you,_ she wanted to tell him. _This is what people do, everybody. It's always terrifying, and nobody knows how to do it exactly._

It's different for him, she knew. He had never been loved right. He hadn't had family, friends, a childhood, a soul of his own. If he had, it had been stolen from him, with all his memories. With everything. All he ever had was a lifetime of pain.

Going to Hawke would be starting entirely new, with no map and nothing to guide him. Through that door was a world completely unknown to him. He had walked through such doors before. But never had it meant so much.

This time he took a deep breath and walked to her door with his heart pounding in his ears, as it has not since he first escaped from the Imperium.

It took everything he had to go through that door, and Merrill wanted to applaud when he did.

But of course, this was the night that everything went wrong.


	6. Chapter 6

Fenris marched into Hawke's sitting room, petrified but determined.

When she turned to look at him, startled and pleased at his sudden entrance, everything he had been rehearsing outside clearly fell right out of his head.

Even so, he wavered for only a moment, then spoke anyway.

"I have been thinking of you. In fact, I have been able to think of little else."

Deep breath.

"Command me to go, and I shall."

Hawke smiled radiantly at this. It was everything she had been waiting to hear.

"Don't leave," she said.

The first kiss is slow and sweet, with a long intake of breath from both parties. They both smiled when it ended, and Hawke sighed happily and put her arms around his neck. Then things started to happen quickly.

Merrill could not have avoided witnessing the next scene if she tried. The dream swept her along forcefully, settling into a kind of feverish headlong rush as Hawke and Fenris kissed and stumbled together and kissed some more. She pushes him up against the wall and presses herself to him, and he growls. He was pulling her hair down from its clasp and she was trying desperately to find a way into all that spiky armor. She managed to get his gauntlets off, one at a time, and he brought his bare hands to the sides of her face as they kissed deeply.

It's so... private, what they're doing, but Merrill couldn't help the little bubble of happiness that she had when she watched them kissing each other. She had never seen Fenris smile this much or Hawke laugh like this and they both deserved to be this happy. Merrill thought everyone should be this happy at least once in their lives.

They were finding their way up the stairs and Merrill was sort of pulled along with them until Hawke was opening the door to her bedroom and giggling with delight.

Merrill thought the dream might skim over this part as well, but everything seemed to stumble to a halt in Hawke's bedroom, a place with sharp clarity in comparison to everything else in the dream.

She was pulling him in after her, and Fenris was ready for it to begin. He took her in his arms and started towards the bed.

But she laughed again, and she said: "slow down. We have all the time in the world."

She had lost interest, temporarily, in undressing him. Her hands rested lightly against his shoulders and he was obviously perplexed, wondering what this was for, what did she want him to do now? She just smiled and looked into his eyes. Her hands stayed there and they demanded nothing. They were just - touching him. They met behind his neck and her fingers touched him there too, lightly. A soft stroke at the back of his neck that made him shiver.

After everything Merrill had seen, after the pain and cruelty and abuse, this was the thing that breaks him. This little touch. A small, gentle caress that had no purpose but to _feel good._ Not to punish or manipulate or to make him hard for her so she could use him to fulfill her needs. She did it because she wanted to.

It felt good, and it was agonizing. Never once in his memory had he been touched with kindness before this, not ever. He took it like a blow and he didn't show it but inside he was staggering. The feeling was bewildering and inexplicable, and it reminds him of something he can almost but not quite remember. A lost memory, perhaps. 

He stared into her cobalt eyes, and the momentary confusion fled. He couldn't have named the look she was giving him, but Merrill could. Hawke loved him. Already, and deeply. Fenris didn't understand it, but he took it in just the same. She calmed him, and when she touched him again it was only pleasure, no pain.

Things proceed from there very naturally. Nothing felt wrong; everything was right. Every new touch was a discovery. Hawke was sweet and patient and so soft and so beautiful. He has heard this referred to as _making love_ before but that had never made any sense to him until now. She showed it to him, that this could be different.

When it was done he had remembered gentleness. He lay panting on the bed with Hawke curling into his side and he suddenly remembered. He had known tenderness after all; when he was a child he knew it well. There were embraces and kisses on the forehead and helping hands. There was encouragement and love and briefly he saw all of it. He had been treasured once. He had known peace, happiness. Perhaps he could know it again, here, with her.

Merrill knew all of this as he did, even as she averted her eyes from their lovemaking. Then she knew what happened next.

He awoke in Hawke's bed empty and angry and cold, and every inch of the goodness he had briefly known is utterly gone. He is hateful and bitter again, and undeserving of the woman in his arms.

He can't remember it. It's all gone.

He thought he knew who he was and where he had come from, and saw the man he could be. But it was all an illusion, a cruel joke. There was no old self inside him, no innocent and deserving person. He was still empty and lost. All he had seen was what he is no longer and will never be again.

Fenris pulled away from Hawke and dressed himself and paced beside the fire.

All of their happiness had turned into shame. He knew, in a factual sense, what they had done together was pleasurable, but his body remembered it differently. He had the same sick feeling he had always had when his body had been used. He tried to think of only Hawke but he remembered everyone else instead. His master, the magisters. Nameless faces he had tried to blot out of his mind and never think on again. It was all coming back, and vividly. The sensations smeared together in his mind and became disgusting, and it was awful to think of Hawke and think of those things at the same time. All of the things that he had done, that had been done with him. He wasn't even taken against his will. He had no will then. It was what he was for. What he still is.

He had been fooling himself. He was not a free man who could love a woman such as Hawke. He was an imitation of a person, a tool to be used by others, and that was not what Hawke deserved. What he had done here was wrong. If Hawke had known what he was she would never have allowed him to touch her. She hadn't see a worthy man inside him after all. He had fooled her too.

He paced on, agitatedly, awaiting and dreading the moment he would have to tell her. He couldn't do this. He couldn't love her, he wasn't capable. He didn't have anything inside him that was deserving of her.

When she awoke it was so much worse. He couldn't explain. She clearly thought she had done something wrong, and there was nothing he could say to make it better. She made him remember loving and being loved and she has broken him. But it isn't her fault. It's his own fault. He should never have come.

Merrill watched him walk out on her, the only good thing that had ever happened to him and he walked away. All he could think of as he did it was her lovely voice saying "don't leave" the night before.

It was all he could think of for a very long time.

* * *

Things were moving faster now.

Merrill was in the Hanged Man, and there was Fenris's sister, and there was Danarius.

And all of Fenris's remaining hopes were utterly crushed.

The moment he saw his Master he was **no one** again. He was powerless, voiceless. All of his carefully constructed persona fell to pieces in an instant.

He fumbles for something to cling to and there was Hawke, coming up beside him, shouting at Danarius. She was angry. Both on his behalf, and for herself, and in a way she had never been before. Even Merrill was a little surprised. Hawke was not a vengeful person. But she wanted to hurt Danarius and she would enjoy doing it. She lashed out at the magister with everything she had.

It compelled Fenris to remember his own rage. The only thing original to himself.

No, it wasn't for Hawke to destroy this man. Revenge did not suit her. This was his task. His only task, his only remaining purpose.

The rest of the scene flew by in a blur – the fight, Danarius dying, Varania pleading for her life.

Merrill paused there a moment to hear Varania tear down any remaining illusions he might have had about his former life. He had chosen to become this. He had chosen, and it had been the wrong choice. It had all been for nothing. There was no family waiting for him with open arms. His "sister" despised him for doing it, and for what he had become.

There was no real self to reclaim. There would be no other life for him than this. This misery. This despair.

* * *

Suddenly they were outside Hawke's manor again, standing in the street late at night, only this felt recent. Merrill could see Hawke through a window, and her hair was longer and she looked as lovely as ever, if a bit sad. This could have been a few months ago, or last week even.

Fenris stared through the window and took a drink from a bottle he had brought with him hoping to find courage in it, but now it was empty and he felt no different. He just felt drunk and pathetic, and it was wrong to watch Hawke like this, without her knowledge, but it was the only time that he could bring himself to look at her, when she wouldn't know.

He wanted to go to her more than anything else in the world, but he couldn't. He just couldn't.

Who knows how often he had tried it, standing outside her home like this, trying to find something in himself that he could share with her. For the last year he had devoted himself to finding his sister, in the hopes that it would bring something back to him. It had only smashed what little he had to hold onto. Even killing Danarius had changed nothing. He had hoped for so long that once he had eliminated his former master he would be truly free. That it would _mean something._ Change something in himself. Maybe without the man who had destroyed him he could become someone new.

It didn't happen. All of his hopes, dashed. No hope left. Nothing.

This scene didn't really end. In the dream, it went on and on.

But this was the end for Merrill.

* * *

She woke up in her home in the Alienage, the spell finished, and looked around her in disappointment.

Merrill finally understood.

He cannot be with her and he cannot be without her and she will not stop waiting for him. Years have gone by and she has taken no lover. She only watches him for a sign that they could be together again. She doesn't move on and he blames himself for this, knows he should leave Kirkwall and leave her to get on with her life but the thought of never seeing her again is unbearable.

This was the only way. He knew his death would hurt her. But she would recover. Losing him to a gang of thieves in the night, she will grieve and she will blame herself but she will get over it eventually. If he had simply cut his throat himself, that she would never forgive herself for. So it had to be this way.

And Merrill ruined it. She saved him and now he can't do it, two accidents would be too suspicious and Hawke is suspicious already. Now there is no way out.

Merrill sank her head into her hands, suddenly very aware of how very foolish she has been.

How arrogant of her, to think she could repair a lifetime of pain with one spell. That she could rebuild a person from the ground up in a single night. How in the world would she have done it, even if it had been possible? All of this was beyond her. Even seeing it with her own eyes, what happened to Fenris was something she couldn't possibly understand.

And what there was between Hawke and Fenris was even more unfathomable; in the face of it she felt like a foolish child. She had no idea what she was doing, she was only fumbling in the dark - only the dark was someone's very soul and she could have done irrevocable damage to it.

Merrill thought she would find a way to help him inside his dreams, inside the memories that plagued him. She expected a wound that she could heal, so that he could move on with his life. She had never expected, in all their interactions, that inside he was nearly nothing but wounds. He had carried with him the ghost of his master, the man who destroyed him, in his every word and deed. How could she possibly repair _that_? A hurt so deeply imprinted on his soul that it was part of him? What was she thinking?

The only person who could save Fenris was himself, and it was going to take a very long time. And she had invaded his most private being for nothing, in her arrogance.

This had always been her folly, the belief that she could fix everything herself. The mirror, the old ways, the whole history of the elves - she had truly believed that she could save them all. She, Merrill, who could barely walk through a door without tripping over the threshold. The Keeper had always tried to tell her and she had never wanted to listen. It was never going to be her. She wasn't the savior of anybody. She couldn't even save herself.

She could only pray that her dream-walking had not made anything worse for Fenris and Hawke.


	7. Chapter 7

Merrill waited the rest of the day to return to the clinic, hoping to avoid Anders. She had a terrible feeling that he would be able to take one look at her and see what she had done, and he would Not Approve. He may not like Fenris very much, but she got the feeling he liked her even less. Anders disapproved of most of her magic anyway on general principle. The whole blood magic thing. He would probably get all Justice-y at her and it would be very unpleasant and she'd rather just avoid that scene altogether.

When Anders closed the clinic for the night he always went out to do his mysterious mage-underground-y things, and that was when Merrill arrived. She poofed through the locked door in a puff of smoke, a trick her demon had taught her, before she stopped talking to it. Before it killed the Keeper.

She didn't use her demon's tricks much anymore.

She found Fenris still resting in the clinic and Hawke still by his side.

Merrill hesitated to interrupt. She could hear Hawke talking to him quietly. It sounded like a conversation, though a bit one-sided. Fenris could not talk yet, his voice continuing to recover from the cut to his throat. But Hawke seemed to be able to read from his expressions what he meant to say.

After everything she had done, Merrill did not want to do anything else to disrupt the two of them. She just wanted to know that all was well, or as well as it could be, and she had not inadvertently made anything worse. This impulse outweighed the wrongness of _once again_ intruding on their privacy.

Merrill cast a minor spell to conceal herself and walked a little bit closer, just close enough to hear what Hawke was saying.

"— quiet since Mother died. Even with Sandal racing around blowing things up — did I tell you he lit the Tevinter statue in the library on fire? I'm sure you're disappointed to hear that!"

Hawke's laugh was like bells ringing, even when it was a little forced, like now.

"But they're leaving soon, you know. To Orlais. Sandal's going to study there. Or more likely he'll baffle them all there as much as he does everyone here and they'll make him a master enchanter, and he'll make Bodhan richer than the Chantry. I hope they'll still talk to me when they're rich and famous."

Fenris moved his hand to pull at her sleeve, and gave her a complicated look. One that Hawke was able to decode without any effort at all, despite that she had no mind-reading abilities that Merrill was aware of.

"I think I can manage without a footman, Fenris. And I'll still have Orana with me. And a big, slobbery dog."

A pause. Merrill had the sense that Hawke was dodging a question that floated in the air between them.

"I won't be lonely. How could I be lonely with all of my crazy friends?" She ran a hand through her long curly hair, in an attempt to look casual. "Isabela is constantly dragging me around to one ridiculous escapade after another, and I've no shortage of drinking buddies. I don't hear much from Carver anymore, but Aveline is always inviting me to one of her dinner parties. She's turning into a proper lady despite herself, our Aveline."

He shook his head, dissatisfied with her answer. On the table next to him there was paper and ink for to communicate with, though he could write only crudely and had so far steadfastly ignored them. He reached for them now.

Merrill could not see it, but he seemed to be drawing a picture, one that must have been a symbol of the Chantry.

"Sebastian?" Hawke said, and blushed. "Of course you would know about that, wouldn't you?"

Then she smiled sadly, and added: "I'll bet he even asked your permission first. Didn't he?"

Fenris shrugged, and then nodded.

"So you're marrying me off to your friends now?"

She said it with good humor, and he smiled back at her faintly.

"He's a good man. He will be a good husband to someone someday. But I can't marry him." Hawke seemed to read every twitch of his eyebrows as a sentence, a volume, knowing exactly what he meant. This one was obviously a question, and she shrugged back at him. "Because I don't love him. I just don't. He's like a brother to me, I can't imagine being with him that way."

He stared at her a moment, and then drew again. He hadn't even finished his sketch (Merrill caught a glimpse of a short figure with a very hairy chest) before Hawke burst out laughing. "Varric's married to Bianca, you know that. Don't be ridiculous."

He tore a page off and started again. This drawing Merrill couldn't see at all, but Fenris looked very cross when he drew it.

Hawke made a face. "Anders? No, oh dear, no. He did try, but I just... He did that whole 'I'm too dangerous, you shouldn't be with me' martyr thing, as if that's any way to proposition someone… no. Not him."

Fenris made an obviously perplexed face, and drew an exaggerated question mark that even Merrill could see.

Hawke blushed. She was quiet for much too long, and then she answered softly: "Just you. Only you."

He closed his eyes and drew a shaky breath. Then he reached for the cloth that was tied to his arm.

Merrill had never really known what that was about, the red band. Just that it meant something private to both Hawke and Fenris.

He untied it and reached out to her, trying to slip it into her hand. He looked at her meaningfully.

_Give up,_ that look said.

Hawke's eyes filled with tears. "No," was all she said, shaking her head stubbornly, and refusing to take it from him.

He pressed it at her again. He looked angry now. But Merrill, and only Merrill, knew that he would literally rather die than do this.

_Give up. It will never happen. I will never be anything more than this._

"Don't, please," Hawke pleaded in a whisper, and still refused him.

When he dropped it to the floor, she dove after it, crouching on the floor to retrieve it. When she came up the tears were falling silently and he cringed and closed his eyes against the sight of it. He would rather be dead than live through this moment, it hurt so much. It hurt more than anything he had ever felt before.

Hawke sniffed and wiped at her face, trying to collect herself. She ran the cloth around her fingers and held it to her like something precious.

"It's… Not like this. I… don't want you to give this up for me. Understand?" She wiped at her eyes again. "Look, someday you'll wake up and you won't feel anything for me anymore. That's the day you take this off. Okay?"

Now he has a hand over his face. He couldn't look at her. If he looked at her now, he might take it all back.

Hawke stops trying to wipe away her tears, and just talks to him.

"Someday there will be someone else that you can love. I would be so glad… Please believe that I would. I want that for you."

She brought the red cloth up to her lips and kissed it, tenderly.

"I tried moving on, I really did." Hawke smiles around her token, a little embarrassed. "There were all those months that we didn't see each other at all, you remember? After the Arishok? I didn't see you for, maybe more than a year then. It was _awful_."

He made a broken sound at this, halfway between a sigh and a laugh, or maybe a sob. He remembered it, of course.

"I missed you. So much. I thought of you every day, even when I was angry, even when I tried to forget. Your voice. Your smile. That little wrinkle you get between your eyebrows when you try to understand something that doesn't make sense."

She giggled at that, how his face immediately recreated the same expression.

"That. I love that. I _missed_ that. I missed _you_. To see you again… it makes me happy. Even though… it just makes me happy, being around you. And this," she held up the red cloth, tangled between her fingers, "it tells me that I mean something to you too. You feel something. It's everything to me. Every time I see it, I thank the Maker. I do."

"I know you can't be with me… the way we were that night. Maybe not ever again. But it's okay. I…" She looked down into her lap, uncertain. "This sounds silly, but I'm glad to have you in my life any way I can. Any part of you. To be able to walk with you and fight with you, to sit with you in the Hanged Man and to talk like this. It feels good. It feels like I'm where I belong. With you."

"What I'm saying is… you don't have to wear this anymore, but, don't take it off because you think it will make me stop loving you. It won't. I don't think anything can."

Fenris had gone very very still.

Hawke bent over him and retied the red cloth around his arm without meeting his gaze. Then she took his hand and bent down to press her lips to it, tenderly. "I'll leave you now," she told him quietly, still holding his hand. "But I'll be back in the morning. Get some rest."

And then she let go of him and walked out of the clinic.

Fenris stared after her, thunderstruck. With one hand, he reached over to Hawke's token on his arm and touched it. Hawke's love. The gift he had carried with him for three long years.

Merrill thought it was the most lovely thing she had ever seen. _You can't just give that up, Fenris. It's precious, so precious. I've never had anything like that. If I ever did, I'd never let it go._

He didn't. He closed his eyes and rested, relieved to have the red band back around his arm, where it belonged.


	8. Chapter 8

Merrill had a lot of thinking to do after that.

She sat down right there in the dark of the clinic with Fenris sleeping fitfully on the other side of the room, and she thought.

She was thinking of what the Keeper had always said about lost history and things that have been forgotten. That they were never really gone. All of the terrible and beautiful story of the elves had been passed down in the blood, mother to daughter, even when the words to describe it had been long forgotten. They would always be carried with them, as long as there were still elves, as long as they lived.

Her Keeper spoke the story in whatever words remained. When she told it you remembered. You knew this story; it was in your blood, your bones. It was like a dream you had, that all your family and friends had, one that would dissolve like smoke whenever you tried to speak of it. The Keeper gave you a part of that back.

It was never quite enough, for Merrill, to have only a part. She wanted the whole, all of it. She wanted it clear and complete and open to everyone. Her Keeper only smiled and said it was with them already, always. She said Merrill didn't want the _story_ , really – she wanted to bring back the past. And the past was never coming back. That was not the way of the world.

(And Merrill thought, resentfully, that it would certainly never come back if nobody _tried_ to restore it.)

Her Keeper said there was no need to bargain with the dark to bring out the light. That was the fast way; it was not the better way. Merrill had always thought that if she was bargaining with her own soul, if she was willing, it would be worth it. Even if everyone she ever loved called her a monster. She would happily sacrifice her soul to restore the People to glory. The only cost was to herself, and it was her choice.

But the Dalish are a family, and a cost to one of them would be paid by them all. This was what the Keeper believed. The Keeper, who loved her like a mother, and did not believe the possibility of recovering their history was worth the cost of Merrill's soul.

Merrill still did not agree. But she could understand it now, and grieve.

The shape of her grief was still revealing itself to her; it was huge, and it appeared at the strangest moments, in the strangest places. It settled over her now like a dark cloak and Merrill longed for her Keeper with all of her heart. Without her she was alone in the world. She had thought she was alone before, but it was not until the Keeper was gone forever that she realized she had always had _her_.

This was her only comfort in these moments: the Keeper had loved her. She knew she was going to her death in Merrill's place, and she didn't blame Merrill at all. She loved her. She loved her.

And this was what gave her the idea.

A way to help. Not a fix, because there was no easy way to fix a broken soul, and it was not her place to try. A gift, for Fenris. One to make up for her meddling. A gift for a fellow elf whose own history had been torn away from him, on top of every other crime that had befallen the elves in the heritage they shared.

It was a Keeper's job to remember.

Of course, Merrill would never be a Keeper, now.

But maybe she could still do it just this once.

* * *

Merrill descended into the dark places in Fenris's mind, below his remembered life. It was like descending to the bottom of the sea, where the pressure was heavy and the water was murky and thick. There were so many things concealed here. An entire person was concealed here, with a life of his own.

It would be too much to release it all at once. An entire other life would be too overwhelming, his mind could splinter under the strain.

Merrill hunted through memories like baubles buried in the sand, tied together like a net. Once she freed one the other ones would float up eventually, hopefully slowly and easily managed. She knew what was most important, something that may ground him and give him strength. She would know when she found it, and she would set it free.

* * *

Suddenly Merrill was being shaken out of her spell-weaving by a panicked voice.

"What's happening? What are you doing? Merrill!"

Hawke. Hawke hysterical, frantic.

"What are you doing to him? STOP!"

Merrill opened her eyes and smiled kindly on her. "It's okay. Really it is."

Hawke's eyes darted between the elf on the bed, enveloped in Merrill's green-tinged magic, and the elf in front of her, blithely calm.

"What have you done, Merrill?" she asked in a hard voice.

"I was trying to help him remember. And I think it worked… I think…"

Hawke slapped her. Hard.

Merrill fell back and stared dazedly at the angry human. All of her magic flickered and died instantly.

"I was only trying to help—"

"How dare you. How DARE you. Do you know what it means to use that magic on someone without their consent? On FENRIS?"

"But he _needs_ this. He needs _her._ Just like I needed—"

"You horrible little twit! When has your meddling ever lead to something good? You destroy everything you touch!"

A groan emitted from the bed, followed by a hoarse and pleading voice. " _Hawke_?"

Hawke was up in a moment, rushing to his side. Fenris was holding his head and rocking forward, curling up, with bewildered anguish on his face. Hawke sat on the bed next to him and gathered him up into her arms and he leaned into her, buried his face in her shoulder and Hawke glared furiously at Merrill.

"If you've damaged him… **I will end you** ," she hissed. She meant it, too.

"It's all right," Merrill repeated, a little forlornly. "I found her."

"Shut up!" Hawke felt the love of her life shaking in her arms and she wanted to kill Merrill for this, for hurting him. Merrill could see it in her pretty blue eyes and the fierce protectiveness with which she held onto Fenris, who would not be easy to hold. She had never looked more beautiful.

He pushed against her, trying to speak. Trying to tell her. An avalanche of memories were unlocking in his mind and he couldn't speak them.

"What is it?" Hawke asked him tenderly.

Merrill's eyes met his and she knew what he wanted.

_Tell her. Tell me. Make this make sense._

Finally, it was her turn to tell the story of the lost past.

"I found her. I found his mother."

Hawke's eyes widened. "What?"

"She was always there. The memories were just buried a bit, under all the bad things."

Fenris leaned into her again, clinging to her tightly.

Merrill told them everything.

* * *

_She was young. She was really, really young, younger than me and younger than I was when you met me. And she was in love._

_They sent him away, the man she loved. To another master. They did that a lot. The Imperium didn't like relationships between the slaves unless they picked them out themselves, and they were not permitted to marry. She never saw him again._

_But she had a baby. They let her keep him and she raised him joyfully. He was the light of her life. Leto. The only anything in all the world that truly belonged to her. She had nothing else but drudgery and endless labor, but she had him. Everything he did, every moment they had together, was a delight. In all of the darkness of her life she had her son, and whenever she was with him, she was happy._

_He was born out of love, and wanted, so wanted. Unlike his sister. Varania, who was not planned for, and who looked like her Master._

_He — you — adored your mother, and your sister, and you worked hard to set them free._

_But what your mother really wanted more than anything, what she prayed for, was for her children and her children's children not to be slaves. And that came true, Fenris. Whatever else became of her, her greatest wish was granted. You made it come true. You even spared your sister when she betrayed you, and now you are both free. Exactly as she would have wanted. She would be so happy._

_You look like her, Fenris. You have her nose, the way it's kind of flat at the top, and her green eyes, and her chin. All of your face, really, except for your black hair and eyebrows, which looked like your father's. You're tall and strong like he was - she used to say that all the time, when you were older. She said you had the same walk, and she would smile when she said it, like it was a wonderful thing you did for her, something to remind her of her lost love._

_You got other things from her too, Fenris: kindness, devotion, courage. She was a gentle woman who put on a brave face for her children, and she taught you everything you truly are._

_I've spent a lot of time looking for lost things. But maybe what's lost is not as important as what remains. You might have lost everything else, when they took your memories, but some of these things you kept. Your determination. Your humor. Your ability to love another wholly and completely — that you most certainly didn't learn in Tevinter, and they couldn't take that away._

_In that way, she is still with you. Always with you. And maybe in the dark times, you can remember now that you had a mother who loved you with all her heart. Maybe that will help. I hope so._

* * *

Merrill stopped talking and bowed her head. Maybe she had done wrongly again. She didn't know anymore. But what's done was done, and there was nothing more for her to do.

Hawke and Fenris were in each other's arms. Hawke's auburn curls surrounded them both and she held him close. She babbled softly what sounded like nonsense words and tears streamed down her cheeks. Merrill couldn't see Fenris at all except for his arms around her sides, holding tight.

Merrill left quietly, unimportant and forgotten.

Everything was up to them now.


	9. Chapter 9

Merrill did not see either of them, Fenris or Hawke, for a long while after that.

She wasn't avoiding them, exactly. Just… not seeking them out. She went to all her usual places. The alienage, the lower markets, the spot in the Foundry district where the air smelled like caramel and she had the perfect view of the stars over the harbor. But she did not call on Hawke, and Hawke did not call on her.

And no one was seeing Fenris at all, it seemed. Even at the Hanged Man, where you would generally find him on a fortnight's basis drinking their sour wine and scowling at everyone, there had been no sign of him.

Anders confirmed that the tevinter elf had recovered enough to leave the clinic under his own power, alone, some time ago. Presumably he had gone to his house in Hightown, where he would sit alone in the cobwebs and shadows, and hopefully not concoct any more plans to conveniently get himself killed.

Merrill worried.

She wondered if her gift to him had been a gift at all, or just more of her meddling, like Hawke had said. He would have to know that she had done it by looking inside of his memories, which would be deeply uncomfortable for anyone. But for him in particular… Oh dear, maybe she shouldn't have. It seemed such a good and wise idea at the time, and now it was just another stupid thing she had done.

Even if she had not actively done him any harm at all, his state to begin with was… not good. He had struggled so under the burden of his history as a slave, and gradually all his hopes had been extinguished. She knew exactly how much he had contemplated the manner and timing of his death, and that he had been entirely committed to it. His only compunction had been whatever Sebastian had been saying about his soul and the will of the Maker and all of that sort of thing - perhaps she should have told Sebastian? He might have known better how to help him.

But no, she had already done at least enough and probably too much.

She found things to busy herself with, since Hawke was no longer calling on her for errands. Like helping Isabela get her new ship seaworthy again (although "helping" was a loose term: Isabela usually shook her head at Merrill's work and did it over herself, the care of her ship being the one matter on which she was utterly serious). Or sometimes she would be out gathering herbs in the countryside for Anders' clinic.

She had acquired a loom not too dissimilar from what the Dalish used, and was trying to learn to weave. The results thus far were not encouraging - she had managed to generate a bolt of fabric with only a few holes, but she didn't know how to make it into anything. Perhaps if she cut a bigger hole, she could wear it as a tunic? It took up time, at least, which was the intent.

Until Hawke invited her to come along and help kill things again, there wasn't much here for her in Kirkwall. Everywhere she went, she was in the way. She had no other skills apart from her magic that would make her useful, and her magic made even other mages uncomfortable. No one came to call on her in her little home in the Alienage. The other elves who lived around her still considered her Dalish and therefore apart from them, and the fact that she traveled with mostly humans and dwarves didn't help. Most of them turned their backs as she passed.

She had known it would be a lonely life without her clan. It was a price she had decided to pay. Now, though, in all this time spent alone and with the broken mirror still sitting in her bedroom, she had to wonder if it had all been for nothing.

* * *

Then one night she saw both of them, back in the Hanged Man as if nothing had happened. It was another night where they all played at cards and Fenris was back in his accustomed chair at the end of the table and Hawke was gossiping with Varric at the other end. Merrill walked in, late as usual, and saw that everyone was there all together and nothing was any different.

Which would be both good and bad. Good because that meant things were not-awful, bad because that meant things were not-any-better.

But she waited awhile, letting herself be lost in the crowd as she observed the group, and she noticed something. Hawke had come behind Fenris's chair to ask Sebastian a question, and she rested her hand casually across the back of his chair, and rested her fingers against the back of his neck. And he did not move away.

It was a small thing, and perhaps no one else would think a thing of it. But to her, it meant something important had changed.

Merrill grinned hugely.

And then Hawke noticed her there. Her eyes narrowed immediately, and she gave the young elf a glare of murderous intent.

Merrill gulped and retreated into the crowd, making her way into Varric's suite of rooms to hide.

Varric appeared perhaps ten minutes later and found her pacing worriedly. "Daisy, didn't you see us out there? We've saved a chair for you."

"Oh Varric, I don't know if I can." Merrill's lower lip trembled. "If Hawke attacks me will you be on my side?" she said pleadingly.

Without missing a beat, he answered reassuringly: "Hawke's not going to attack you - where'd you get that crazy idea?"

"She's kind of awfully angry with me. I did something foolish."

"Aw, Daisy, if we attacked each other every time someone did something dumb we'd all be dead by now. I seriously doubt she is that angry."

A deep voice cut in from the doorway. "I'm afraid she is that angry." Fenris's voice had not returned entirely, but it had recovered enough for them to make out a dryly humorous note to his comment. "She will get over it in time. But you would best stay out of her way for awhile."

They both turned to look at him in the doorway. The tall elf looked more or less back to normal, though with a still-healing scar across his throat.

Varric looked between the two of them. "Anyone want to fill me in?"

Merrill spoke uncertainly. "The foolish thing I mentioned… It involved Fenris."

"And it seems Hawke has a hidden vengeful streak where I am concerned," the elf admitted with evident amusement.

Varric snorted. "I could have told you that. She'd rip the face off anyone who messed with you. You didn't know that?"

Fenris dipped his head thoughtfully. "Not exactly. It has been… a pleasant surprise."

Merrill smiled hopefully.

"I was wondering… I shouldn't ask I know but — did it work? What I did?"

Merrill didn't see him coming. With a sudden predatory movement, Fenris had crossed the room in a moment and stood over the shorter elf. With one hand he gripped her shirt by the collar, forcing her up on her toes in order to remain standing. She had to look up to see him, how his nostrils flared with anger and his large green eyes hardened to a deadly gleam.

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear," he said with no small amount of threat. "Do not, ever, presume to know what I need. The thing you did in the clinic? Never do it again. Not ever, for any reason. Or I'll kill you myself."

"Hey hey hey," Varric cut in firmly, gesturing purposefully towards the stand where Bianca rested, "no death threats in my room! At least not against anyone _else_ in my room!"

The taller elf glared at her until she nodded rapidly, and then let her go.

The dwarf casually inserted himself between the two of them. "I think we should all go back to drinking and cards, all right?"

Fenris ignored him and addressed her directly. "You have been… discreet on certain matters. So we will call it even. Understand?"

"Um," said Merrill, who didn't understand.

Fenris rolled his eyes disbelievingly. "The scene you witnessed."

Varric broke off and started looking around for a pen. "What scene was this? This is juicy stuff!"

"Oh! The thing that I know! Yes of course, that's a secret, I wouldn't tell a secret to anybody, unless they wanted me to for some reason—"

"Found it!" Varric said, grabbing a piece of paper as well. "Let's start at the beginning then…"

Fenris held the bridge of his nose and swore quietly in Arcanum.

"It's nothing, Varric," Merrill insisted. "Just something that I meddled with, that was probably going to be sorted out all on its own. You know me, always stumbling around ruining things. As if anyone would ever need _my_ help!"

Varric squinted at her suspiciously.

Fenris stalked around the suite as Merrill talked, and paused before the floor-length mirror Varric kept in the corner.

Merrill had a feeling Fenris rarely looked at himself, knowing how he felt about the lyrium brands that covered his body. He looked at himself now, pensively.

"It is… interesting to look at myself and see something other than punishment and injury. I am accustomed to thinking myself a weapon forged by a madman. I did not think there was anything more to see." His head tiled slightly as he considered certain features of his own face. "But there are a few things – I can see her in places, parts of her. Her face. Her eyes. It is… comforting. More than I would have thought."

Varric continued to take notes. He would ask Merrill to fill in the details later.

Fenris trailed off, moving away from the mirror. This was as much as he was prepared to share with Merrill, clearly. But it was enough; now she knew her spell had worked. He remembered. He could see his mother's face now, solid in his memory, and maybe hear her, know her, as well.

It was a small thing. But big changes can come from small things. Seismic shifts happen below the surface. Merrill could feel it – something inside him was shifting.

Merrill was happy just to know that much. She didn't expect anything more; Fenris seemed about to walk out of the room without another word. But he stopped at the door and turned around.

"Merrill."

She looked up apprehensively, not sure even now if he was going to curse her for her meddling.

His mouth opened, and at first no sound came out. Then Fenris dropped his head, hiding his eyes behind his messy white hair, and his lips pressed together in a thin line. Then, having thought about it further, he looked up again.

"You're not a monster," he said.

Then he left.

"Oddest compliment I've ever heard," Varric said, writing it down.

He didn't notice Merrill's eyes glistening as she stared after Fenris. Of course Varric couldn't have known that this was exactly what Merrill most needed to hear.

And it came from a man who had himself called her a monster more than once. That meant a lot, it really did.

It might even have meant, "thank you."

She walked over to the doorway and watched Fenris walk up behind Hawke, who sat with a hand of cards. In a smooth, subtle motion, he leaned over and said something into her ear that made her giggle. He pressed his lips to the top of her head, gently. Then he walked the rest of the way around and took his place at the table, and he may have been the furthest from Hawke of anyone there, but the way they looked at each other, they could have been the only two people in the room.

"Nothing is ever really lost," Merrill whispered to herself. Then she smiled and joined her friends.


End file.
